Abstract
The cosmetic surgery industry mobilizes and nourishes a powerful fantasy of embodiment. Concealing the importance of skin as the site of transformation and customization, this fantasy promises a body that is infinitely transformable and customizable. Within late capitalist postmodern societies of the West that value private enterprise and consumer choice, this is a salient fantasy that consists of the desire to eliminate emotional suffering through changing the body, as well as a desire for a body that is controllable and impenetrable. Conceiving of the skin as a textile is one strategy used by the cosmetic surgery industry to capitalize on this fantasy through the alignment of cosmetic surgery with fashion. In this chapter, I argue that there is a Western cultural preoccupation with thinking about skin as analogous to fabric—as “skin-textile”—that increasingly repudiates the violence implicit in this conceptualization of the skin in the context of cosmetic surgery. This violence is done through a distancing from the cutis—the living skin that feels—and a transformation of the skin into pellis—the dead skin to be sewn and manipulated.
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© 2013 Rachel Alpha Johnston Hurst
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Hurst, R.A.J. (2013). The Skin-Textile in Cosmetic Surgery. In: Cavanagh, S.L., Failler, A., Hurst, R.A.J. (eds) Skin, Culture and Psychoanalysis. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137300041_7
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137300041_7
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